Folks, thanks largely to links in this thread, I started reading Fishman's excellent LP of the original XCom, then busted out my old CD's and used them to install Open XCom myself, and I've been happily killing aliens, and sacrificing Rookies, ever since. Last night, I played for a couple hours while I had random UFO shows on the TV in the background. It was glorious.
Even so saying that "satellite rushing" reduces choices and forces the player to adhere to arbitrary rules is like complaining about builds requiring you to build workers in starcraft.
Exactly. It's such a basic requirement that not doing it is unthinkable. If you don't, you will lose.
That's exactly what I refuted in my earlier posts though. I've built 4 sats and got 5 country coverage in the first month on I/I. My techrush start is arguably better on I/I. Sat rushing isn't the end all be all of builds/strategies in xcom. In the sentence you're quoting I was specifically addressing that if it were the case it's still not really a flaw, in so much that in the original xcom you're forced to build rangers and bases so I guess that's railroading too. Requiring you to manage certain types of basic buildings and resources in order to win isn't somehow poor game design, even if you have to manage the same ones every playthrough.
Edit: Dracomicron: I agree, ground missions are the most difficult part. Classic is very balanced though and you can certainly make pretty big comebacks, complaining about unfair on classic is almost always unwarranted. I/Is difficulty curve gets out of whack the first 2 months however. I really love the games though, I love a strategy game with 2 layers where every decision impacts all my future gameplay.
Even so saying that "satellite rushing" reduces choices and forces the player to adhere to arbitrary rules is like complaining about builds requiring you to build workers in starcraft.
Exactly. It's such a basic requirement that not doing it is unthinkable. If you don't, you will lose.
That's exactly what I refuted in my earlier posts though. I've built 4 sats and got 5 country coverage in the first month on I/I. My techrush start is arguably better on I/I. Sat rushing isn't the end all be all of builds/strategies in xcom. In the sentence you're quoting I was specifically addressing that if it were the case it's still not really a flaw, in so much that in the original xcom you're forced to build rangers and bases so I guess that's railroading too. Requiring you to manage certain types of basic buildings and resources in order to win isn't somehow poor game design, even if you have to manage the same ones every playthrough.
Edit: Dracomicron: I agree, ground missions are the most difficult part. Classic is very balanced though and you can certainly make pretty big comebacks, complaining about unfair on classic is almost always unwarranted. I/Is difficulty curve gets out of whack the first 2 months however. I really love the games though, I love a strategy game with 2 layers where every decision impacts all my future gameplay.
what is this techrush start?
Get scientists, build a lab, rush capture technology, capture an outsider ASAP and then pull off a base mission in month 2.
Month 1 and 2 are by far the most dangerous times in I/I. Losing some countries (typically few, sometimes zero) first month only hurts your mid/lategame which are parts of the game you can beat anyway. The weakness of a sat rush start is that until the later half of month 2 you're weak as hell, almost all the advantages you get from sending those sats up are either spent as infrastructure in month 1 or the gear/buildings/bonuses aren't ready until mid month 2. This sets you up for getting your ass destroyed early month 2 by difficult UFO/terror missions.
A sat start sets you up for a terrific month 3 however, which is great in classic but most runs won't even get there on I/I. The tech start frees up more resources month 1 to actually gear your dudes, and it gets you access to some light tech in month 2 (scientists on the first abduction mission + early lab + possible captured aliens = gets you crazy low research times on basic research). Remember to sell basically all your recovered shit, anything that isn't needed for research, on either build on I/I.
The techrush makes certain missions completely critical (Usually you'll have more than 1 try at an outsider though) and a small screwup can doom you. However this is every single mission on I/I for the sat rush as well so it doesn't really matter. Get ready to rage at failed 90% capture chances (1 health really should be 100%, just how rockets should have 100% aim or a miss chance you can actually plan around). If you succeed the alien base mission month 3 will be terrific in this build as well, as you'll be flush with stuff and all panic will be dumped, setting you up for midgame.
So, for XCOM 2, I really hope and can't wait for someone to do a good Terminator mod. I saw the new movie (not terrible, not good), and I think we've already seen enough Terminator enemy types to fill out a roster.
Going by the E3 demo, we could have T-800s serving as mainline troops, the snakelady is clearly a T-1000, and the Beserker could be an H/K tank. The player classes already fit into the Resistance mold. All you'd have to do is change the color of the plasma weapons to purple.
There's a new sniper ability called Death From Above, which allows you to get an extra action when you kill an enemy at a lower level than you. That's on the sniper tree. Then if you have the pistol ability, Fan Fire, you can then use that free action to use Fan Fire with your pistol after using your sniper rifle. What Fan Fire does is it lets you shoot three times at a single target. Those are relatively early, mid-game abilities that you can already see how you can have these really powerful chain attacks, mixing and matching going down both trees.
Now they've become even more poisonous. They can't just poison you with the Chryssalid Kiss as they did with Enemy Unknown. Every time they strike you, the tips of their claws have a poison on them. You can receive a chryssalid poison effect with any attack. If you happen to die while that chryssalid poison attack is active, then the soldier that died, or the civilian, can then enter this gestation period, and they will become a cocoon. If that cocoon does not get destroyed by XCOM within a to-be-determined amount of turns, then three chryssalids can pop out.
They're a little bit more brittle in XCOM 2. They can be taken down a little bit easier, but it is overwhelming just to see the sheer number of volume that can come at you if you allow them to go through this cocoon process.
Now they can actually burrow underground. When you're walking through maps, you don't know where they are, if they've burrowed underground. We will have counterplay that we're not talking about now through items and gear to be able to get in front of that if you choose to, but at any moment, and this actually happened to me the other day, you're walking along, and a chryssalid literally jumped out of the ground and took me down.
There's a new sniper ability called Death From Above, which allows you to get an extra action when you kill an enemy at a lower level than you. That's on the sniper tree. Then if you have the pistol ability, Fan Fire, you can then use that free action to use Fan Fire with your pistol after using your sniper rifle. What Fan Fire does is it lets you shoot three times at a single target. Those are relatively early, mid-game abilities that you can already see how you can have these really powerful chain attacks, mixing and matching going down both trees.
Now they've become even more poisonous. They can't just poison you with the Chryssalid Kiss as they did with Enemy Unknown. Every time they strike you, the tips of their claws have a poison on them. You can receive a chryssalid poison effect with any attack. If you happen to die while that chryssalid poison attack is active, then the soldier that died, or the civilian, can then enter this gestation period, and they will become a cocoon. If that cocoon does not get destroyed by XCOM within a to-be-determined amount of turns, then three chryssalids can pop out.
They're a little bit more brittle in XCOM 2. They can be taken down a little bit easier, but it is overwhelming just to see the sheer number of volume that can come at you if you allow them to go through this cocoon process.
Now they can actually burrow underground. When you're walking through maps, you don't know where they are, if they've burrowed underground. We will have counterplay that we're not talking about now through items and gear to be able to get in front of that if you choose to, but at any moment, and this actually happened to me the other day, you're walking along, and a chryssalid literally jumped out of the ground and took me down.
We've got Chrysalidsign.
+5
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DuriniaEvolved from Space PotatoesRegistered Userregular
Now, the chryssalid, they're a little bit too crazy of a species to integrate human DNA into them, but they have evolved. They've received some upgrades. What they did in Enemy Unknown, is they implanted XCOM with something that would then breed another chryssalid out of them, if you remember. It was a pretty terrifying sequence. Design said, "How can we make this crazier?"
...I don't think I want to know the answer to that question, thank you...
For business reasons, I must preserve the outward sign of sanity.
--Mark Twain
While I appreciate the variety lids bring to the gameplay loop, I never really liked them because of the high stakes surrounding them. You can tank or be criticially wounded or just straight up dodge plasma fire, but the only real options for lids are you die or they die. The game is good enough at making you feel like you're on the razor edge of survival anyway.
Steam: Cilantr0
3DS: 0447-9966-6178
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mastertheheroProfessional Video Editor & Book AuthorRegistered Userregular
Well the good thing is it sounds like they're still in the balancing stages. So even though 3 lids might pop out of the cocoon, they'll be weaker health wise. Lid never really bothered me in X-Com though, they were fun to fight.
Yeah,'Lids were pretty easy to learn how to deal with. They'd always just move towards your closest guy and melee them. If you were far enough away from them they'd never get to attack.
The only things you had to worry about was, not knowing where they were, and not knowing whether they'd come to you, or go for a civilian.
And, since they had no weapon fragments, you could use explosives with impunity.
While I appreciate the variety lids bring to the gameplay loop, I never really liked them because of the high stakes surrounding them. You can tank or be criticially wounded or just straight up dodge plasma fire, but the only real options for lids are you die or they die. The game is good enough at making you feel like you're on the razor edge of survival anyway.
You can tank lids fine in 2012 XCOM, they aren't an instant kill any more than plasma is. You just can't dodge or go down not dead.
And since they only melee...it's not like any other unit would miss from 1 square away
Cover's a little weird. When someone's at a corner, they're effectively also in the open spot to the side of the cover (where they step out to fire). This might cause what you're seeing.
Lids were only a threat if you were
- undergunned
- activated in the middle of a turn
- activated with another group
The new Blue Move / Gold Move system and 'aliens cannot ambush you from FoW' rules pretty much left 'lids dead on arrival. And, well, any melee fighter (aside from the Seeker).
the red dot is the sectoid; the green is my sniper
I tossed a grenade and destroyed both of the pillars to the left of the path
the sectoid was no longer visible to my sniper, but remained visible to my other units
edit: so what you're saying is, the sectoid is effectively in three tiles when he's behind cover
the tile to the left of cover, the cover itself, and the tile to the right of cover
so my sniper only has LOS to the first state from the marked position?
I absolutely don't mind the game being stupid-hard or even unfair, but I get a little bit grumpy at what I perceive to be a bug. If it can be explained as part of the ... esoteric rules at work, then I can factor that in going forward.
By corner we mean "any piece of (it might have to be heavy for you to be able to lean? not certain) cover with one side not adjacent to a piece of heavy cover". I'm not sure about your second example, but in the first one the sectoid was peeking around both sides of the grave-penis it was taking cover behind. Once its cover was destroyed and thus was no longer peeking around those corners, it seems to have been lined up with those other gravemarker-thingies in front of it as well as the wall. Either of those could plausibly obstruct a sniper's LoS to it. That part of the graveyard is really tricky with line of sight thanks to all those heavy cover pieces so close to eachother.
going by the rules presented in this document, I would like to know where I messed up - the line, drawn from the center of the 'step out' tile to the center of the enemy tile is unobstructed.
Yup! Line of sight is just really goddamn buggy when it comes to grenades destroying cover and that shit. It sucks, and I hope the next one has some goddamn indicators for that.
I've seen similar bugs before and I think saving and reloading, or sometimes doing another action causing it to cycle back around to that character can force it to recalc. I know one time I couldn't get it to recognize the LoS so I just had the sniper overwatch and when the dude inevitably ran for cover he got pasted.
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chiasaur11Never doubt a raccoon.Do you think it's trademarked?Registered Userregular
When I get that kind of cover bug, it sometimes helps to cycle through all your troops. Sometimes the enemy because visible again after that for some reason. Just a settling thing, maybe.
calling it now, the new head scientist is a penguin.
(penguin is the code word my rpg group used to call a teammate that didn't know they were compromised by the DM... long story short, it involved penguins...)
Oh god I need this now. Named scientists and researchers. Rookie training. Weapon customization and naming. Soldier customization (idle animations even!?) God damn. Like I knew this would be good, but dat geoscape and customization.
And can you guys believe there will be Steam Workshop mod support and tools? I can't.
I'm throwing my wallet at the screen but nothing is happening.
For business reasons, I must preserve the outward sign of sanity.
--Mark Twain
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mastertheheroProfessional Video Editor & Book AuthorRegistered Userregular
The thing that gets me excited is thinking about how I can roleplay my soldier with the idle animations.
I can start off with a soldier being focused and ready to fight but when he gets taken out of action. I can add scars to his body and then change his animation to twitchy.
Or I can start with a twitchy rookie, have him go on a few missions and become a battle hardened hero and then change his animation and add tattoos to his body. The potential for adding personality to the soldiers is incredible. Ugh, so damn excited!
Posts
what is this techrush start?
Get scientists, build a lab, rush capture technology, capture an outsider ASAP and then pull off a base mission in month 2.
Month 1 and 2 are by far the most dangerous times in I/I. Losing some countries (typically few, sometimes zero) first month only hurts your mid/lategame which are parts of the game you can beat anyway. The weakness of a sat rush start is that until the later half of month 2 you're weak as hell, almost all the advantages you get from sending those sats up are either spent as infrastructure in month 1 or the gear/buildings/bonuses aren't ready until mid month 2. This sets you up for getting your ass destroyed early month 2 by difficult UFO/terror missions.
A sat start sets you up for a terrific month 3 however, which is great in classic but most runs won't even get there on I/I. The tech start frees up more resources month 1 to actually gear your dudes, and it gets you access to some light tech in month 2 (scientists on the first abduction mission + early lab + possible captured aliens = gets you crazy low research times on basic research). Remember to sell basically all your recovered shit, anything that isn't needed for research, on either build on I/I.
The techrush makes certain missions completely critical (Usually you'll have more than 1 try at an outsider though) and a small screwup can doom you. However this is every single mission on I/I for the sat rush as well so it doesn't really matter. Get ready to rage at failed 90% capture chances (1 health really should be 100%, just how rockets should have 100% aim or a miss chance you can actually plan around). If you succeed the alien base mission month 3 will be terrific in this build as well, as you'll be flush with stuff and all panic will be dumped, setting you up for midgame.
Just be ready for the other base mission...
Going by the E3 demo, we could have T-800s serving as mainline troops, the snakelady is clearly a T-1000, and the Beserker could be an H/K tank. The player classes already fit into the Resistance mold. All you'd have to do is change the color of the plasma weapons to purple.
Sharpshooter
Chryssalid
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
We've got Chrysalidsign.
...I don't think I want to know the answer to that question, thank you...
--Mark Twain
3DS: 0447-9966-6178
Sectopods on the other hand, f--- those guys.
The only things you had to worry about was, not knowing where they were, and not knowing whether they'd come to you, or go for a civilian.
And, since they had no weapon fragments, you could use explosives with impunity.
- undergunned
- activated in the middle of a turn
- activated with another group
You can tank lids fine in 2012 XCOM, they aren't an instant kill any more than plasma is. You just can't dodge or go down not dead.
And since they only melee...it's not like any other unit would miss from 1 square away
(during my recent runs)
twice now
- my sniper can see a guy
- he's in high cover, so I've tossed a grenade to destroy the cover
- my sniper can no longer see the guy
is this a bug, or does the destruction of cover / the grenade itself block sniper visibility for a turn?
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
The new Blue Move / Gold Move system and 'aliens cannot ambush you from FoW' rules pretty much left 'lids dead on arrival. And, well, any melee fighter (aside from the Seeker).
the first was in the small graveyard
the red dot is the sectoid; the green is my sniper
I tossed a grenade and destroyed both of the pillars to the left of the path
the sectoid was no longer visible to my sniper, but remained visible to my other units
edit: so what you're saying is, the sectoid is effectively in three tiles when he's behind cover
the tile to the left of cover, the cover itself, and the tile to the right of cover
so my sniper only has LOS to the first state from the marked position?
I absolutely don't mind the game being stupid-hard or even unfair, but I get a little bit grumpy at what I perceive to be a bug. If it can be explained as part of the ... esoteric rules at work, then I can factor that in going forward.
I attempted to adapt this screenshot into a mockup
going by the rules presented in this document, I would like to know where I messed up - the line, drawn from the center of the 'step out' tile to the center of the enemy tile is unobstructed.
Why I fear the ocean.
XCOM 2 looks dope as fuck
Love that even engineers and scientists have names
Hype factor . . . GYAAAAAARGH!!!! I WANT IT SO BAD! Love, love, love the changes so far. Super exciting.
edit: oh goddamn those customization options. you can change demeanor????
edit2: yo dat geoscape action
edit3: man the graphics looks hotter than the previous media led me to believe
edit^∞: fuck everything give me this game
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Lily Shen heyyyyyyy
tru nuff
(penguin is the code word my rpg group used to call a teammate that didn't know they were compromised by the DM... long story short, it involved penguins...)
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
AWBNUIOSAGBFDAOSGJBN A;JSLGFDNH
Oh god I need this now. Named scientists and researchers. Rookie training. Weapon customization and naming. Soldier customization (idle animations even!?) God damn. Like I knew this would be good, but dat geoscape and customization.
And can you guys believe there will be Steam Workshop mod support and tools? I can't.
This isn't happening.
Bnet tag: Nermals#11601
lol
EDIT: I'm still mad that there are no mechs. Of course that will come in the DLC.
The Avenger actually isnt a reference to the marvel movie airship, but rather an XCOM1 craft.
Also, the chrysalids look more like the arachnids from starship troopers. I like it.
RIP Satellite rush. Good riddance!
Now I can look forward to getting "That's XCOM!"-ed on the strategy layer too!
--Mark Twain
I can start off with a soldier being focused and ready to fight but when he gets taken out of action. I can add scars to his body and then change his animation to twitchy.
Or I can start with a twitchy rookie, have him go on a few missions and become a battle hardened hero and then change his animation and add tattoos to his body. The potential for adding personality to the soldiers is incredible. Ugh, so damn excited!